-Thanks, but we found someone who'll do it cheaper

Recently, I put together a pictorial family tree to share at a family gathering. This sounds more grand than it really was--I simply took data from a quirky, web-based interface and translated to a paper-based format. With the information laid out in a viewer-friendly manner, no longer confined to a screen with mouse-over pop-ups, the blood flow, then to now, was much more compelling. We could see the lineage, movement of names and families across time and continents. England, Ireland, Canada and the United States were the places, the names and towns too many to list here.

The grunt research work was done by Sheryl and a cousin I've seen a few times. That not-so-distant relative used a website for genealogical research. As one moves back in time, the details, understandably, become more scarce. Wedding dates are the first casualties, followed by maiden names, birth dates and towns, death dates. The records remain, however, and can be traced--in our case, all the way back to the fifteenth century. I don't imagine anything as noteworthy as a Mayflower passage, but in some cases, the timing would have been about right. The quest to add shape to the hushed history of a native American divorced from the clan was unsuccessful.

The preamble above is my unsubtle acknowledgment of the sufficiency of documentation for my family's immigration history. We came from elsewhere. The records skimp on such information, but one can be sure typical reasons for emigration all played a part in the crossing of borders and oceans: They sought freedom, religious and economic; They fled tyranny of all sorts, and moved toward a new world of opportunity and hope.

That the United States still represents these things around the world is axiomatic, and as such, we remain a destination. We have, too, become a target, and those people who aim to diminish our stores of hope and opportunity are likely hidden among those crossing to take part in them. At least so goes the thinking that generated all the hot air on Capitol Hill, the press, and the resulting nationwide protests and marches.

After all the ink, air-time and debate, the federal response has been deployment of reserve troops for unarmed, logistical support at our southern border. To describe this response as lackluster would be high praise, but then, it is an election year. One could suppose that, after November, all settled into their seats, our legislative branch might be emboldened to enact meaningful legislation in order to stem the tide of illegal entrants. Even after the elections are over, however, the likelihood is that politicians will continue to hack away at the problem, whittling the wrong end with their rhetorical knives.

Perhaps a good comparison is with America's 35-year old "War on Drugs". There, too, we engage an ongoing, troubling challenge to the prosperity, safety and health of our nation and its citizens. Look again to the picture at the top of the page--drug dealers also stand on street corners and wait for people to drive up with ready money, but we only see one of these crimes on "Cops".

As with the war on terrorism, we spend untold sums on eradication of the problem at its source, using our military to poison and burn fields of drug crops and assist law enforcment efforts in other countries. We also seek to interdict both drugs and illegal (and potentially harmful) human entrants at our borders and in our waters, air space and ports.

There is something missing, however, from our immigration war, and our elected representatives are unlikely to add it, before or after this November--think of it as Nancy Reagan's legacy: the "Just Say No" mentality. Mrs. Reagan realized, as do our school systems and parents, that we can burn as many coca fields as we can find, but unless demand for cocaine ceases to exist, Americans will continue to snort and smoke it, regardless of scarcity or cost. We get off on cheap labor, as consumers and employers.

The National Drug Control Strategy, issued by the White House in February 2006, presents three main areas of focus for addressing America's ongoing drug problem: stopping drug use before it starts, healing drug users, and disrupting the market for illicit drugs. These strategies match those guiding drug policy for the year 2005 as well, and can be translated, roughly, as interdiction, rehabilitation and education. Added to the ongoing eradication efforts at our border and points of origin, and the educational "Just Say No" efforts, is an emphasis on the renewed and ongoing health of users.

On a comparative level, our immigration battles seem relentlessly single-minded: Efforts at interdiction apparently begin and end with intercepting border sneaks--in trucks, on foot, over deserts, rivers and roads. With approximately 33 million illegal aliens now in the US, more than double the amount in 1980, the effectiveness of interdiction is not even debatable: it simply doesn't work. (You'll note I've dispensed with the euphemistic nicety of referring to those millions as "undocumented workers". Sneaking into the country is, in fact, illegal, and substitution of "worker" for "alien" confuses what a person does with her citizenship status. The two are not interchangable. Use what label you will, we have millions of them, and more on the way.)

My suggestion for a workable, solution to the "immigration problem" is one that fully embraces the concepts and approaches found in the national drug control strategy of the last couple of years. Let's equate stopping illegal immigration at the border with preventing drug use before it starts. We'll need to stop the supply to kick our illegal-alien-labor habit, but we'll table that portion of the problem for the moment.

More pressing is addressing the demand side of the problem, the other part of "disrupting the market" for unlawful entry and employment in the United States. The federal government has, as yet, failed to act in a decisive manner on this issue, leaving legislative and enforcement efforts largely in the hands of local government and business. At 33 million and climbing, "undocumented workers" are finding few impediments in the lucre-for-labor world.

Recent efforts in Palm Bay, Florida indicate a similar failure of will on the part of local government. A recent proposal to impose a $350 fine on employers who knowingly employ ineligible workers met with much outcry and opposition. Really. In addition, such employers would be barred from bidding on public contracts and operating within the city. A 3-2 vote from the city council ratified the status quo, but perhaps began a dialogue we've done our best to avoid nationally.

Among the points bandied by opponents in Palm Bay were possibility of discrimination and racial profiling, inability of employers to verify documentation accurately, overload of enforcement agencies and unfair targeting of construction and real estate interests. One wonders on which other laws these residents and commissioners prefer weak penalties and lax enforcement. So much for interrupting the market in Palm Bay.

In reponse, if I may: 1. Conflating ethnicity and citizenship status merely confuses the issue and is misleading--the two are not interchangable. If enforcement officials or employers discriminate based on ethnicity, there are well-known laws to punish them, and they should be enforced. We are a nation of laws--you know, like the ones that govern employment. 2. In a world where I can trace ancestors back 500 years, verify a car's entire history with only a VIN , track sex offenders across the country and back, all on the internet!, and where the government can access data on all phone and bank transactions in the interests of national security, it is laughable and disingenuous to claim emloyment eligibility can not be verified. 3. Hire more enforcement agents. If money is needed to do so, use a $5, 000 or $10, 000 fine instead of the proposed $350. Additional revenues collected (multiply 35 million by X, just to get the top end) can then be used to build that wall on the border, assuming we continue to pursue that misguided effort. You can be sure, though, that the river across the border will slow to a trickle when the jobs dry up. 4. Forgive the hyperbole, but one might also say that plantation owners were unfairly targeted by the efforts of abolitionists--one goes where the action is.

But then those contractors will need just a little help adapting to the cost of lawful behavior, as will the people who buy the homes they build. So we come to another piece of wisdom translated from our drug abuse prevention policy: healing the users. Like that of pre-Civil War America, our current economy depends on the unfairly-compensated labor of many, many people. That's not going to be an easy addiction to break. For all the tough talk on amnesty, we need, as a nation, to be frank about the contributions of those tens of millions, and about the absolute impossibility of that many deportations. It's not just the rooves over our heads, of course, but the vegetables we eat, the vacuumed offices we work in and clean dishes we eat from, our cut grass and our child care, the road crews and the painters.

It can be done, and there will have to be a path to citizenship for those workers, like it or not. Include in a list of suggestions tight requirements for current working residents (illegal aliens) to be considered for integration into our cultural and (legal) work environments, a six-month to one year window for employer compliance, a phased relaxation of minimum-wage laws, targeted at key industries, with specific limits and time-tables, new restricitions on all legal immigration limits from all countries while we integrate current and eligible aliens, guest worker programs, etc.

The details are best left to the legislators and lobbyists, but again, throwing up or hands in despair is laughable and disingenuous. The healing needed by the other users of this "system"--the governments of the countries to our south--well, we can at least force the issue, then leave it to the diplomats. We can do all of this, and must. Leaving it in the hands of Army reservists and self-appointed Minutemen simply exacerbates our dividedness, our peril.

Which brings us to the final plank of our national drug/immigration policy: education. While the press and current administration have done a more than adequate job of illuminating the threat of terrorists among unauthorized border crossers, not much other enlightenment on the problem has emerged. There are many stakeholders here--labor, consumer, ethnic, national security, business, human--and all those voices need to be heard, as they need to listen. Like they say on the drug-awareness public service announcements, "Talk to your kids about drugs. They'll listen."

Let's talk.